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Boost 1.53.0 Released

By marshall | Feb 4, 2013 10:48 AM | Tags: None

Release 1.53.0 of the Boost C++ Libraries is now available.

These open-source libraries work well with the C++ Standard Library, and are usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use.

This release contains five new libraries and numerous enhancements and bug fixes for existing libraries.

New Libraries:

  • Atomic: C++11-style atomic<>, from Helge Bahmann, maintained by Tim Blechmann.
  • Coroutine: Coroutine library, from Oliver Kowalke.
  • Lockfree: Lockfree data structures, from Tim Blechmann.
  • Multiprecision: Extended precision arithmetic types for floating point, integer and rational arithmetic from John Maddock and Christopher Kormanyos.
  • Odeint: Solving ordinary differential equations, from Karsten Ahnert and Mario Mulansky.

Links:

Thanks,

--The Boost release team

   Beman Dawes
   Daniel James
   Eric Niebler
   Marshall Clow
   Rene Rivera
   Vladimir Prus

B-Tree Containers from Google

By Eric Niebler | Feb 1, 2013 11:06 AM | Tags: None

Google has graciously gifted to the community a set of STL-like containers that use B-trees under the covers. The code has been released under the Apache 2 license.

C++ Containers That Save Memory And Time

We’re pleased to announce C++ B-Tree, a C++ template library that implements B-tree containers with an analogous interface to the standard STL map, set, multimap, and multiset containers. B-trees are well-known data structures for organizing secondary storage, because they are optimized for reading and writing large blocks of data. But the same property that makes B-trees appropriate for use with databases and file systems also makes them appropriate for use in main-memory, just with smaller blocks. [...]

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Online C++ compilers

By Blog Staff | Jan 31, 2013 11:29 AM | Tags: None


Many people don't realize how many web pages offer access to try out C++ compilers, including many of the latest compilers with burgeoning C++11 language support. So we thought we'd publish a list.

Do you:

  • want to try out C++, but don't have a compiler installed?
  • want to try out a C++11 feature your compilers don't yet support?
  • want to compare the results of compiling a test program using different compilers?

Then try one of these online compilers! Some are compile-only to let check whether your code is legal, and some let you also run your test programs to see their output. For each, we include a list of the compilers that the page currently supports -- they include the latest from Clang (3.2, Dec 2012), GCC (4.8.0 prerelease), Intel (13.0, Oct 2012), and Microsoft (VC++ alpha CTP, Nov 2012).

This list is now also available on the Get Started! page.

Quick Q: What can I do with a moved-from object? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Jan 31, 2013 08:18 AM | Tags: basics

Quick A: It's a valid object with an unspecified state, so start by using member functions that have no preconditions. For example, assign a new value to the object.

What can I do with a moved-from object?

Does the standard define precisely what I can do with an object once it has been moved from? I used to think that all you can do with a moved-from object is do destruct it, but that would not be sufficient...

Effective C++11 update -- Scott Meyers

By Blog Staff | Jan 30, 2013 05:40 PM | Tags: intermediate basics

This week, Scott Meyers posted a couple of updates on how C++11 is coming to one of the world's most-loved C++ book series -- Effective C++.

 

First, here's Scott's preamble about his approach to Effective C++11:

Effective C++11: Background

I've mentioned in some earlier posts that I plan to start writing a new book, Effective C++11.  The purpose of this post is to tell you a little bit about it. Lest there be confusion, let me emphasize that there is no book yet. If everything falls into place the way I hope it will, there will be a book about 10 months from now. If. I'm not making any promises. [...]

 

As a followup, Scott then posted an early draft list of candidate Items for Effective C++11 as part of this post:

Effective C++11: Content and Status

[...] At last year's C++ and Beyond, I gave a talk entitled "Initial Thoughts on Effective C++11." It had my usual guideline format. I also gave a talk on "Secrets of the C++11 Threading API," which consisted of observations about C++11's threading support. The material in those talks, combined with the feedback I got from giving them and mixed in with my experience explaining the idea of universal references, ultimately yielded the initial list of candiate Items for EC++11. The current snapshot of my vision for Effective C++11 is: [...]

At least a million developers are looking forward to your book, Scott!

No pressure.

cpp-netlib.org announced

By Blog Staff | Jan 28, 2013 08:49 AM | Tags: None

From Dean Michael Berris:

cpp-netlib.org is here!

The project's new home is now at http://cpp-netlib.org/ (links to the old site should automatically redirect to this domain). We're looking at scaling the effort of the project and enforcing a few processes for consistency and for velocity. A few highlight to the website content:

  • A style guide. We are now getting to the point where we have a lot of code and more people sending in pull requests. In this light we've started a very minimalist style guide. We will discuss and update this as soon as we have more data to make decisions.
  • A development policy document. We've attempted to codify what we do and how we do it.
  • A proposal process. If you're considering getting involved or helping get your library developed or included in cpp-netlib, there's now a process for that.

We're also now ramping up our migration to use Google Test and getting ready to use Clang Format to use the Google style-guide formatting (just for the formatting) to make the code more consistent. I'm driving that process and getting the codebase into a more maintainable state. I've learned in these past few years that readable code makes my life easier, and contributors lives easier. Having said this we're not going to compromise on features of C++11 that we're going to use. I believe that now is the time to use C++11. ...

 

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Pattern-Oriented Software Architectures for Concurrent and Networked Software -- Doug Schmidt

By Blog Staff | Jan 22, 2013 10:25 AM | Tags: intermediate

A video preview is available for Doug Schmidt's upcoming free MOOC with Vanderbilt University via Coursera:

Pattern-Oriented Software Architectures for Concurrent and Networked Software

Next session: Starts March 4 (8 weeks long)

Workload: 4-6 hours/week

Douglas C. Schmidt is a Professor of Computer Science, Associate Chair of the Computer Science and Engineering program, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, all at Vanderbilt University. He has also been the Chief Technology Officer for the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was responsible for directing the technical vision and strategic R&D investments.

C++ developers will know of Doug particularly because of his widely-acclaimed ACE and related libraries.

We asked Doug to provide an overview in his own words of what you can expect to see in the course and how it relates to C++11 in particular:

After a short ~45 minute intro to the topics covered in the course, the rest of the videos are divided into the following sections:

  • [~3 hours] Intro to concurrency and networking, which provides background info at the OS and middleware levels.  This part focuses on concepts and is largely language-neutral.
  • [~7 hours] Intro to patterns and frameworks, which provides coverage of pattern-oriented software architecture, with an emphasis on concurrent and networked software.  Small C++ and Java examples are shown throughout, though the main focus of this section is more on design techniques rather than programming, per se.
  • [~6 hours] Applying patterns and frameworks to develop concurrent and networked software, which examines *lots* of C++ code.  A high-performance HTTP web server is used as a running example to illustrate patterns and frameworks in practice.  80-90% of the focus is on C++ here, with some examples showing how you can do similar types of things in Java to demonstrate the generality of pattern and framework techniques.
  • [~3 hours] An appendix that provides an overview of C++ (including C++11 features), a case study of fundamental "Gang of Four" patterns that aren't directly related to concurrent and networked software, and other background information that may be of interest to some course participants.

January standards papers mailing available

By Blog Staff | Jan 21, 2013 11:46 AM | Tags: None

The between-meetings standards papers mailing is now available. It includes the spring meeting agenda, updated issues lists, and a number of new papers including at least one that came through the public std-proposals forum. (Update: Please also direct discussion about these papers to that forum.)

 

WG21 Number Title Author Document Date Mailing Date Previous Version Subgroup Disposition
SD-1 2013 PL22.16/WG21 document list Clark Nelson 2013-01-15 2013-01      
SD-2 ISO WG21 and INCITS PL22.16 membership list Clark Nelson 2013-01-11 2013-01      
SD-3 SC22/WG21 (C++) Study Group Organizational Information Herb Sutter 2012-10-04 2012-09      
SD-5 WG21 and PL22.16 (C++) Joint Mailing and Meeting Information Herb Sutter 2010-09-20 2012-09      
2013-01
N3493 Compile-time integer sequences Jonathan Wakely 2013-01-11 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3494 A proposal to add special mathematical functions according to the ISO/IEC 80000-2:2009 standard Vincent Reverdy 2012-12-19 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3495 inplace realloc Ariane van der Steldt 2012-12-07 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3496 AGENDA, PL22.16 Meeting No. 60, WG21 Meeting No. 55, April 15-20, 2013 -- Bristol, UK Stephen D. Clamage 2013-01-02 2013-01      
N3497 Runtime-sized arrays with automatic storage duration (revision 4) Jens Maurer 2013-01-01 2013-01 N3467 Core  
N3498 Core Issue 1512: Pointer comparison vs qualification conversions (revision 2) Jens Maurer 2013-01-07 2013-01 N3478 Core  
N3499 Digit Separators Lawrence Crowl 2012-12-19 2013-01 N2281 Core  
N3500 New assert variants Olaf van der Spek 2012-11-28 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3501 C++ Standard Core Language Active Issues, Revision 82 William M. Miller 2013-01-14 2013-01 N3480 Core  
N3502 C++ Standard Core Language Defect Reports and Accepted Issues, Revision 82 William M. Miller 2013-01-14 2013-01 N3481 Core  
N3503 C++ Standard Core Language Closed Issues, Revision 82 William M. Miller 2013-01-14 2013-01 N3482 Core  
N3505 Filesystem Library Proposal (Revision 4) Beman Dawes 2013-01-12 2013-01 N3399 Filesystem  
N3506 A printf-like Interface for the Streams Library Zhihao Yuan 2012-12-26 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3507 A URI Library for C++ G. Matthews, D. Berris 2013-01-11 2013-01 N3484 Networking  
N3508 Any Library Proposal (Revision 2) B. Dawes, K. Henney 2013-01-11 2013-01 N3390 Library  
N3509 Operator Bool for Ranges Olaf van der Spek 2012-12-19 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3510 std::split(): An algorithm for splitting strings Greg Miller 2013-01-10 2013-01 N3430 Library Evolution  
N3511 exchange() utility function Jeffrey Yasskin 2013-01-10 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3512 string_ref: a non-owning reference to a string, revision 2 Jeffrey Yasskin 2013-01-11 2013-01 N3442 Library Evolution  
N3513 Range arguments for container constructors and methods, wording revision 2 Jeffrey Yasskin 2013-01-11 2013-01 N3456 Ranges  
N3514 A Proposal for the World's Dumbest Smart Pointer Walter Brown 2012-12-19 2013-01   Library Evolution  
N3515 Toward Opaque Typedefs for C++1Y Walter Brown 2013-01-11 2013-01   Evolution  
N3516 C++ Standard Library Active Issues List (Revision R81) Alisdair Meredith 2013-01-15 2013-01 N3473 Library  
N3517 C++ Standard Library Defect Report List (Revision R81) Alisdair Meredith 2013-01-15 2013-01 N3474 Library  
N3518 C++ Standard Library Closed Issues List (Revision R81) Alisdair Meredith 2013-01-15 2013-01 N3475 Library  
N3519 Feb 5, 2013 SG1 Teleconference Announcement and Agenda Hans Boehm 2013-01-11 2013-01   Concurrency  
N3520 Critical sections in vector loops Robert Geva 2013-01-11 2013-01   Concurrency  
N3521 convert() utility function Jeffrey Yasskin 2013-01-12 2013-01   Library Evolution  

 

C++11 Rocks: Visual Studio 2012 Edition -- Alex Korban

By Blog Staff | Jan 18, 2013 05:24 PM | Tags: intermediate basics

Alex Korban has written a nice e-book that covers the parts of C++11 available in Visual Studio, including documenting limitations and bugs while still focusing on how using the C++11 features makes code cleaner, safer, and faster into the bargain.

The Visual Studio 2012 edition is now in beta. See the table of contents for what's covered, and a free sample to check out the style.

C++11 Rocks: Visual Studio 2012 Edition

by Alex Korban

Highlights from the description:

Visual Studio 2012 gives you the opportunity to use C++11 features to make your code significantly cleaner and easier to read, and to improve performance as well.

But which features are there? Are they ready for use in production code? ... 

You can master the C++11 features in VS2012 with this book. It’s laser focused on C++11, Visual Studio 2012, and nothing else. You’ll quickly get in-depth knowledge of the stuff you need to know.

You’ll learn easily with tons of examples. I spent a lot of time researching and testing, and as a result the book details many C++11 bugs and cases of non-standard behavior in Visual Studio.

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Announce: Third Annual European LLVM Conference

By Eric Niebler | Jan 16, 2013 01:03 PM | Tags: None

For many of our readers, LLVM and Clang will need no introduction. LLVM is a modular compiler toolchain, and Clang is an LLVM front-end for the C family of languages. They're both implemented in C++. Together, they're taking the C++ toolchain in new directions. Be a part of the action at this just-announced developer conference in April in Paris. (Does it get better?) From the announcement:

Announcements

We are pleased to announce the third European LLVM conference on April 29-30 2013 in Paris, France. This will be a two day conference which aims to present the latest developments in the LLVM world and help strengthen the network of LLVM developers. The format will be similar to that of the previous meetings held in London but with more time for presentations and networking. The meeting is open to anyone whether from business or academia, professional or enthusiast and is not restricted to those from Europe -- attendees from all regions are welcome.

This meeting is about 8 days after the ISO C++ standardization meeting in Bristol, UK. Twofer, anyone? The full announcement gives all the details.

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